I don't understand Windows 8 at all...

[Nuccii]

As a point of interest, did you run the Windows Upgrade Advisor to see if your system could handle Windows 8 properly, it would have told you what would have to be addressed.

 

[kona0197]

Yes I did. The only issue it came up with is an older program that may not work under Windows 8, and as far as hardware, no issues. I did a clean install. Installed updates. Rebooted. Installed 8.1. System is very, very slow. No programs installed yet, just updates.

 

[Nuccii]

Did you just perform this upgrade? Usually between the maintenance and updates tasks it takes a couple of days to settle down. Check in Task Manager if your RAM is performing as it should and that there are no processes running high.

 

[kona0197]

No, I did the upgrade to 8.1 about a week ago. System is still sluggish as it was when I installed it. I think it may be the live tiles dragging down the CPU performance or the way 8 handles the CPU. Or maybe my CPU is just not good enough.

 

[OldGuyGeek]

Live Tiles would not drag down your system. To prove it, turn off all your Live Tile updates. Nothing will change.

Not to be disparaging, but your specs aren't the greatest. The oldest system that I've installed Windows 8 & 10 on is a Core 2 Q6600 which has a PassMark of over double your CPU. It runs Windows 8 & 10 fine. But you also have a 120GB Seagate, leading me to believe it's pretty slow too. Also, are the NVDIA drivers for your 7400 actually for Windows 8? I couldn't find a driver on their site for Windows 8, just for Windows 7.

But, ignoring the system limitations, check your drive's free space swap file settings and make sure you have enough room on your hard drive. In fact, go into your system properties and changing the swap file from System to a static size. Use the same value for both min & max. It will relieve Windows of the task to actively manage the size. Make sure you allocated the recommended size.

There could be other things as well, but that it may help.

As far as the tiles, I agree with the other people that recommend it. I strongly prefer the Start Screen rather than the Start Menu. I can find a program to run extremely fast in the Start Menu I organized. Much faster than using the Start Menu. And I don't need a lot of Desktop icons for my favorite programs. I just have them in the first part of my Start Screen. Even though I have an old 2-point touch screen installed, I use my mouse and the Start Screen saves me time everyday.

Like others said, give it a chance and approach it positively and not negatively and you should be happy with it.

Hope you can get your system to speed up.

 

[altae]

I'd also say you got a driver issue. As far as boot time is concerned I'd try to disable hibernation/ fast boot. Use google, you will find quite a few tutorials how to do that. Let the system boot the old fashined way. And if your system becomes slow while running open the task manager to find out which processes actually block your system (cpu usage, memory usage). I'm sure there must be a problem with your system, Windows 8 is definitely a lot faster than Windows 7.

 

[kona0197]

I'm just gonna wipe the drive and install either Vista or 7. Thanks guys for the help, but enough is enough. Need to get some work done, and I need a stable working OS to do that.